MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough slammed Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an agent shot and wounded a man inside an SUV in New York City on Thursday while a 5-year-old sat in the back seat. The “Morning Joe” co-host accused federal agents of “gambling with the lives” of children and warned that President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown will be “looked back upon as a dark, dark chapter in American history.”

According to New York City officials, at approximately 4 p.m. ET in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal was shot in the neck after plainclothes federal agents approached his vehicle. The child, believed to be Belgal’s son, was not injured.

In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security said its officers were attempting to an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic and alleged that he had a criminal conviction for grand larceny and multiple previous arrests.

On Friday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said agents were unaware a child was in the vehicle. He also blamed Belgal, who he said attempted to flee and struck officers’ vehicles.

Scarborough told viewers, “Just put yourself in the scene here. … As school is let out in New York, that’s the time an ICE agent unleashed a hail of gunfire into a car” with a 5-year-old in the back seat.

“The boy, only by the grace of God, was not hurt,” he added.

Scarborough argued that the shooting raises serious questions about ICE’s extreme tactics and whether agents are following established policing principles on the use of deadly force.

DHS doesn’t “talk about how every other law enforcement agency in America would have gone in and gotten that man peacefully out of the car,” he said. “They don’t want to talk about that. No, no, they don’t want to talk about why an amped-up federal agent sprayed bullets in the direction of a car on a crowded street in a residential area at school pickup time.”

For Scarborough, the central issue isn’t the man’s criminal history or the broader debate over immigration enforcement, but the danger posed by the agents’ actions and the potential consequences for those caught in the middle.

“This isn’t about whether immigration law should be enforced. … This is about whether enforcing them gives anyone a license to keep gambling with the lives of 5-year-old children, with Americans, with immigrants,” he said.

Scarborough also challenged the Trump administration’s argument that its immigration crackdown is intended to make communities safer.

“This whole idea about immigration — ‘We’re going to make the streets safe from gangs.’ Really? Really? Why is it that these communities that they were supposedly supposed to protect, they’re actually scared of these ICE agents who act like thugs, who aren’t trained, who carry around guns and shoot wildly into parked or slowly moving cars,” he said.

The MS NOW host said ICE’s “beyond outrageous” behavior under the Trump administration would “be looked back upon as a dark, dark chapter in American history” and called out Republican lawmakers for their complicity in the president’s crackdown.

“People will wonder how Republicans in the Senate and the House ever allowed this to happen,” he said.

You can watch Scarborough’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

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